CDs/DVDs
Thomas H. Green
John Foxx was one of electro-pop’s original instigators. His alienated synth sound and Ballardian sci-fi vision defined the genre in its early days. He was, for instance, an acknowledged influence on Gary Numan who became a global star in 1980 as a result. Foxx did not, but his Metamatic album is still regarded as an important stepping stone in electronic music’s development. With a sideline in academia and graphic conceptual art, Foxx retains a rabid fan-base who follow his every move. He’s also extraordinarily prolific, recording at least twenty albums since the millennium, including Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
As vaporous as the haze on its cover, the sound of Kiasmos resonates like clouds sweeping across low mountain peaks, intermittently breaking into a storm or opening to reveal wan sunlight. Although firmly within the boundaries of electronica, the self-titled debut instrumental album by Kiasmos still beats with an organic heart.There are touches of a Balearic pulse on “Looped”, a pattering glitchiness on “Lit” and even a hard house beat opening and punctuating the acid-esque “Swayed”. But live drums, grand piano, viola, violin and cello temper the wash of electronics and softly throbbing Read more ...
Guy Oddy
From the sonic vantage point of the Ting Tings’ new album, Katie White and Jules De Martino’s explosive appearance in 2008 with hit single “That’s Not My Name”, with its lively mix of indie guitars, electronics and bolshy vocals, seems a long time ago. The dominant sound of Super Critical is emphatically funk, disco and chart pop.The title track is a lively, Prince-like groove with brass embellishments, a funky bass and even the Purple One’s trademarked high-pitched backing vocals. “Green Poison” is a mash-up of Prince-like funk pop and the riff from Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitous”. “Daughter Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Since part of every star’s make-up and appeal is their backstory, can we ignore how unremittingly dull Jessie J’s has been? She cut her teen teeth on a TV talent show, left the Brit School (pop star university) the same year as yawn-inducing Leona Lewis, apprenticed as a Sony songwriter, creating ditties for the odious Chris Brown, then “graduated” to official pop stardom. What a yawn! Sounds like a CV, like a proper job, all good, honest hard work and very boring for it. And that first album, with the perennially irritating “Price Tag”. God alive, that was annoying. So listening to her third Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
If you’ve ever found the idea of “cock rock” to be unnecessarily gendered, then the debut album from Ex Hex – an all-female trio who, between them, have created the best 35 minutes of ballsy rock 'n' roll I’ve heard since Sleater-Kinney’s “The Fox” – is for you. If you haven’t, and you’re just looking for something new to listen to that’s uncomplicated and up-front that will blow the cobwebs out from between your ears, then Ex Hex is also for you. And if you’ve been struggling to find a record that would match the giddy girl-rock high you got the first time you listened to Wild Flag’s first Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Bevis Frond: MiasmaMiasma wasn’t meant to have an afterlife. The Bevis Frond’s debut album wasn’t even by a band. Its creator, Nick Saloman, wrote all the songs, played every instrument and recorded it in a Walthamstow bedroom on a 4-track system which used cassette tapes. Saloman pressed the album in 1987 and had few expectations beyond, as he says in the liner notes included with this reissue, “giving it to friends and family and sticking the rest [of the copies] up in the attic forever.”Today, The Bevis Frond are still a going concern and a Saloman-fronted band as such. Their Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There is no other actress on the planet like Juliette Binoche. For the latest proof watch Camille Claudel 1915. Most screen actors, even the very best ones, can never quite obliterate themselves from a performance. You know it’s Chiwetel Ejiofor or Cate Blanchett or Ralph Fiennes embodying the experiences of a character. It's somehow different with Binoche. Be they big or small, she lets feelings wash through her that seem to have nothing to do with the construct of performance.There having been another film about Rodin’s mistress starring Isabelle Adjani, the title of Bruno Dumont’s film is Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Red Shift is a fascinating, if flawed, gem of ambitious and disturbing 1970s TV drama. It was adapted by Alan Garner (The Owl Service) from his own novel, and set in the south Cheshire landscape he grew up and lived in. Its director, John Mackenzie, also helmed Play for Today dramas by Dennis Potter (Double Dare) and Peter McDougall, and would go on to make Bob Hoskins a star in The Long Good Friday.We begin in present time – the late 1970s – and the teenage travails of clever, wound-up Tom (Stephen Petcher) and calm, preternaturally knowing Jan (Lesley Dunlop), who’s about to leave for Read more ...
Guy Oddy
No Romeo is the debut album by Nottingham-born, singer-songwriter Indiana. If this suggests acoustic guitars and warbling on in a vaguely folkie way, it is misleading. For while Indiana sings throughout, her musical accompaniment is electronica. Electronica that has no truck with 21st century hip hop beats or post-dubstep grooves, but often reaches back into the 90s for inspiration.“Never Born” sees Indiana rain curses on some poor unfortunate to a tune that is initially reminiscent of veteran trip-hoppers Lamb, before it whacks up the volume to a chant of “I will rise up!” “Solo Dancing”, a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
“Wildern” means “poaching” in German. That’s as in pheasant, rather than egg. On this album, German jazz singer Tobias Christl goes poaching (foraging might be more accurate) for iconic rock songs, which he adapts for his jazz quintet. Retaining on some level the basic emotional character of the song, he otherwise manipulates freely, to the point where in a couple of cases it’s not obvious which song he started with. We end up with familiar melodies made radically unfamiliar, with saxophone improvisation, eruptions of krautrock, distorted vocals and stretched rhythm turning familiar songs Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Oblique and gentle, Lilting is a tender, tough drama about Junn, a Cambodian-Chinese widow played by the legendary Pei-Pei Chang (HK’s martial arts icon known as “Queen of Swords” and recognizable to western audiences from Crouching Tiger...) and her dead son’s lover, Richard (Ben Whishaw), as Junn tries to sort out the untold nature of the men’s relationship.The opener of the London LGBT Film Festival, Lilting is as sensitive as one would expect, but raucous and ragged when it shows how one gets to the touchy truth. Not only is Junn alone, she is also quite without English (though she can Read more ...
Russ Coffey
According to Johnny Marr people with gigantic egos are generally miserable. Jokes about Morrissey aside, it follows Marr must be a pretty contented guy. For what other guitarist with his reputation would have put vanity aside to spend 20-odd years as a gun for hire? Now, however, it seems the affable muso finally wants to be a solo artist. Last year he released the interesting, if patchy, The Messenger. Now he’s back with Playland. So what’s it like?In interview, Marr says it sounds just like “where he’s from”, and it’s true that some of the album feels like rain on gray Read more ...